---Description---Irregular hard white rough grains possessing little taste, partially soluble in cold water and affording a fine blue colour when iodine solution is added to its filtered solution. Many of the starch grains are swollen by the heat of drying. The root of the Sweet Cassara may be eaten with impunity; that of the Bitter, which is the more extensively cultivated, contains an acrid milky juice, which renders it highly poisonous if eaten in the recent state; this poison is entirely eliminated in the process of washing and drying for the production of Tapioca.

East India arrowroot, or Aircuma arrowroot, is derived from the tubers of Aircuma angustifolia and C. Leucophiza, belonging, like the true arrowroot, to the order Marantaceae, according to some botanists, and by others assigned to the same order as the ginger, viz. Zingiberaceae.

Bear in mind "A Modern Herbal" was written with the conventional wisdom of the early 1900's. This should be taken into account as some of the information may now be considered inaccurate, or not in accordance with modern medicine.